Ground-mounted PV near Salisbury

[Wickham]

16 Upsolar 190W panels with Enecsys micro-inverters (3.04kW total):-

[JohnS]

Looks good.  You seem to have chosen a shallow angle but the sloping site might be deceptive.  Any reason or is it the optimum for the site?

What made you choose Enecsys micro inverters?  How did the cost compare? Let us know how the output compares in the monthly survey.

John

[Wickham]

29 degrees is the optimum for this part of the south of England but the nearest standard angle for the support system was 30 degrees which is what I have.

The array also slopes down the slope at about 10 degrees.

There's a wide electricity pole just outside the hedge on the right which causes hard shading for one or two panels during the morning. This shadow on a very sunny day causes a 75% to 80% loss in power to about 40W from 175W for all the other panels so I have micro-inverters to stop all the other panels having reduced output. The cable at the top of the pole is soft shading but even that reduces output by 15%. The reductions only occur in sunny conditions. During cloud or dull weather there's no shading so no reduction (but all panels produce less). The trees in the background cause shading very early on a summer day, and during winter I will probably have some early morning shade from teh hedge, so these are other reasons for using micro-inverters. It's the best I can do in a small garden and I can't put panels on my roof.

I'm sure the micro-inverters cost more than the DC single inverter system, but I should improve on the output that I would have had with a single inverter by quite a lot.

I've now put weed supressing sheet under tha panels to control grass and weeds.